


sometime around midnight

by nevermordor



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Blowjobs, M/M, Post-Movie, Slurs, unhealthy relationship dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 07:50:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12526492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermordor/pseuds/nevermordor
Summary: This right here, Fletcher, is his worst habit. Worse than the drinking, and the occasional cigarette, and his tendency to never call his father back. Worse than the not sleeping, and the not eating, and the picking at his cuticles and his calluses and at the phantom scars that stretch across the palms of his hands.





	sometime around midnight

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written for Whiplash in like an age and a half but oh boy if I still don't have a whole metric ton of feelings about this movie and these two. I found this as an unfinished WIP. It's meant to be read as a sort of a companion piece/prequel to "Heart Black and Body Blue" but I think it also stands on its own just fine. Title credits to The Airborne Toxic Event and their song by the same name. The lyrics, "You just have to see her/you know that she'll break you in two" remind me so much of Fletcher and Neiman.

He’s beginning to feel more like a collection of bad habits than an actual person.

It’s cold out in the city tonight. The drizzle from earlier has turned to a full downpour. Rainwater drips off the edge of his coat, seeps through the cuffs of his jeans. Andrew fumbles for the cigarette that he bummed off the tenor sax player—Madrigal? Madison?—from the jazz combo he’s been playing with the last couple weeks.

It was a shitty set tonight. The fucking idiot on bass couldn’t keep time and Andrew spent the whole night imagining what Fletcher would do if he were in the audience, if he’d jeer, if he’d throw bottles and the thought made him nearly burst into a fit of laughter in the middle of their set.

At the end of the night, he drank away money he couldn’t afford to spend, grateful for his fake ID AKA the only useful thing Connelly ever did for him. He pretended he couldn’t feel Tenor Sax—Morrison? who knows—staring at him.

The rain falls faster. The first drag off the cigarette scorches his throat and he coughs and quickly takes another drag. He makes a mental note to buy a full pack on the way home.

“I didn’t think you were a smoker,” Tenor Sax said as they were packing up. His fingers brushed Andrew’s as he passed him a cigarette. Andrew shrugged and didn’t bother to answer as he tucked the cigarette behind his ear, as he zipped his sticks up and pulled on his coat. “You’re really good, you know. Maybe the best drummer I’ve ever played with. Hey. You doing anything right now?” Andrew glanced at Tenor Sax: tall and built, maybe an ex-jock in high school; late 20s, shaggy brown hair; a hipster douchebag jacket and an “Eat No Meat” button on the lapel that practically screamed “Sensitive Bisexual.”

Tenor Sax—Morrissey? He was too fucking drunk at that point to bother remembering—smiled a little wider and raised a playful eyebrow. “Thanks for the cigarette,” Andrew said flatly and turned away.

So he could take the train all the way to Brooklyn, and a bus that was half an hour late, and walk a block to be here. So he could be _here_ : sitting out on the front stoop of Fletcher’s brownstone as rain collects in the bottoms of his beat-up sneakers, as the time on his phone slips past midnight, as his head pounds from the beer and the nicotine, and he waits for the door to open. So he can babble for five minutes about incompetent bass players from Kansas and mediocre hipsters until Fletcher tells him to shut the hell up and pulls him inside, and fucks Andrew until he’s shaking, until he’s pleading.

A chill slithers down his spine. Andrew taps his foot to the beat of the rain as it hits the pavement. He feels a little like a pet. Smoke spills out the corners of his mouth, trailing into the evening haze.

 _This_ right here is his worst habit. Worse than the drinking, and the occasional cigarette, and his tendency to never call his father back. Worse than the not sleeping, and the not eating, and the picking at his cuticles and his calluses and at the phantom scars that stretch across the palms of his hands.

This is the worst.

“Put the fucking cigarette out.”

Andrew jumps. He stubs out the cigarette on the front step and scrambles to his feet. The world around him sways and he nearly falls down again, but for the hand that fists itself in the front of his jacket.

Fletcher’s face swims in and out of focus. He’s glaring at Andrew, his upper lip curled in disgust. Andrew grins.

“You’re drunk,” Fletcher snaps.

“No kidding.”

The hand yanks him forward, hard. He has to stumble to catch himself. There’s an eruption of pain along the left side of his face and for a split second he figures it’s probably because Fletcher’s smacked him. He doesn’t really care though because the door is slamming shut at last and he’s being shoved up against it.

Fingers curl around his chin, turning his face this way and that.

“Hurts,” Andrew croaks.

“You hit your head on the door frame, dumbass.”

He wonders if Fletcher is telling the truth and then, again, isn’t really sure he cares because Fletcher’s breath is hot against his cheek. The scent of coffee and expensive aftershave clings to him. Andrew pictures him sitting alone for hours at his kitchen table before finally thinking to check the front stoop and is pleased by their mutual loneliness. He leans in for a kiss.

Fletcher jerks back, out of reach. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. You smell like shit and probably taste worse.”

Andrew snorts. “Pansy.”

The grip on his chin tightens but at least it makes his head stop spinning.

Fletcher is glaring at him. Andrew stares evenly back. There are only a few things he’ll never get tired of, and looking at Fletcher is one of them. He lets his gaze rove over the faint wrinkles of his face, the ones he’s always wanted to trace with his fingers and never dared. He likes the smoothness at the corners of Fletcher’s eyes and at the edges of his mouth, where there should be laugh lines. He likes the slope of his bare scalp and the faint jagged scar just above Fletcher’s left ear. He thinks about the other scars on Fletcher’s body that he’s caught glimpses of, that he’s thought about trading the stories of for his own, finding the places where their pain intersects. He will never do this because to do so would bring them even closer, and he’s already too twisted up in Fletcher for his own good. Every night they spend together, Andrew can feel the noose tightening.

“Mouthy little cunt tonight, aren’t you?” Fletcher says at length.

Andrew laughs faintly. “You like it.” Fingers thread themselves in his hair. Andrew slides down to his knees, and it’s a slow and dizzy descent. “Maybe you should put me to better use.”

Fletcher curls over him, lets out a muttered curse as Andrew’s mouth presses to the crotch of his jeans.

The rain falls harder. Fletcher grinds against Andrew’s face, strokes his hair, hisses something inaudible that Andrew lets himself pretend is praise. He licks at the outline of Fletcher’s cock until he gets the zipper down, and then braces his back against the door and lets Fletcher fuck his mouth in short, fast thrusts that make him choke and then laugh and then choke again.

He could have gone home with Tenor Sax. Maybe Eat-No-Meat would play Andrew all of his favorite old jazz records, the ones that inspired him to join band in junior high, maybe Mister-Sensitive-Bisexual would kiss him on the mouth and give Andrew his number the morning after and ask, insistently, when they could see each other next.

Fletcher comes in his mouth without warning him and makes Andrew swallow. His hand uncurls from Andrew’s hair and he steps back, tucking himself away, straightening his clothes. “You’re fucked in the head, Neiman,” Fletcher remarks.

Andrew wipes away the spit and come on his lips with the sleeve of his jacket. “In more ways than one,” he rasps and Fletcher doesn’t smile but he comes pretty damn close as he hauls Andrew to his feet once more.

 

 

Fletcher told him stay but Andrew sees himself out at a quarter after five. Fletcher snores and there are bite marks all along Andrew’s inner thighs that he needs to ice before practice. He locks the door behind him. The rain’s cleared and the sky’s stained with pre-dawn.

He’ll be back, the night after next probably. This is, after all, his very worst habit. It’s the only one he’s not sure he could break.


End file.
